One of the laws of God that is as sure as gravity is that God’s ways are not our ways and our thoughts are not His thoughts. God’s ways are as far above our ways as heaven is above the earth. So if this Coronavirus turns into a pandemic, and many thousands of people die, many of whom we might know, how can we survive? Ask a thousand people, and you will get a variety of answers, but almost all of them will be similar to this; buy enough food, toilet paper, bottled water, gasoline, etc and then isolate yourself and wait it out.

Let me show you what God says in Psalms 41:1-3 “How blessed is he who considers the helpless, the needy. The Lord will deliver him in a day of trouble. The Lord will protect him and keep him alive, and he shall be called blessed upon the earth. . .The Lord will sustain him upon his sickbed; in his illness, You will restore him to health.”

Wow, is that really true?? I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God, His instructions in how to live life successfully. That means that the person who looks for opportunities to help and serve others instead of looking out for himself will be blessed by God, God will protect him, keep him alive, and will restore him to good health. That sounds like a good deal to me.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you go and buy up all the Handi-wipes at Costco, and then stand on the street corner, and give them away to whomever. But I do think it means that you have a purpose, and that purpose causes you to pay attention all day long, and that you are always looking for opportunities to help and to serve other people who have a need in a time of crisis. That would be risky from man’s point of view, but living by faith in God and in His Word is always risky,that is why it is called faith.

One of my personal and leadership principles is, “Live life intentionally”. That means that I plan my life in advance as much as possible without going overboard, and fretting about what I can’t control. I budget my time by using “to do lists”, establish priorities by using goals, and I premeditate attitudes and words on the basis of upcoming events and situations that I probably will be in. So I have established some personal guidelines for my actions and words in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis that we are in. I express these guidelines as commitments in the form of “I will” statements each morning.

1. I will not be anxious, fret, worry, or get stressed out about the possibility of being infected, getting sick or dying. If I find myself moving in that direction even a little bit I will pray asking God for His peace, joy, and strength. I will trust God totally, I am, after all, anxious to go to heaven, get my new body, and be done with this life.

2. I will act and talk like a person who has great faith, great peace, great joy, and great hope. I will be strong, I will not be a wimp.

3. I will not talk negatively about the situation in any way. I will not speak critically about our leaders and those who are making decisions on controlling the virus. I will faithfully pray for their wisdom.

4. I will take advantage of any situation with any person that I am with who is expressing any concern or anxiety about the virus, to talk to them about trusting in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior so that they can live in heaven forever with a new body.

5. I will take advantage of any situation I am in with JBC family to encourage, teach, and lead so that they will move and grow towards strength and being a bright light and an effective witness for Jesus.

6. I will enjoy the challenge of solving new problems and the challenge of being a strong and influential leader in the midst of confusion, chaos, and crisis.

7. I will take every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ, and will not allow myself to think weary thoughts, self-pity thoughts, selfish thoughts, anxious thoughts, or critical thoughts. I will rejoice always.

It looks like with all that I read in the news on the internet that there are a lot of people who have a lot of fear. Fear sucks all the joy, hope, and peace out of our hearts and minds, and leaves us incapable of thinking and acting rationally with any degree of wisdom. Fear consumes our thinking, it overshadows all other emotions, and totally controls our life. With all the negative consequences that come into our life, and into the lives of those around us that we influence when we allow fear to control us, it is no wonder that God warns and even commands us not to fear.

Joshua 10:25 “Do not fear or be dismayed! Be strong and courageous.”

Psalms 23:4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Judges 6:23 The Lord said to him, “Peace to you, do not fear”

Psalms 27:3 Though a host encamp against me, My heart will not fear; Though war arise against me, In spite of this I shall be confident.

Psalms 46:1-3 God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; Though its waters roar and foam, Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride.

Psalms 55:4-5 My heart is in anguish within me,
And the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, And horror has overwhelmed me.

The way that we obey the command to not fear is to pray every time we feel even a twinge of nervousness about anything, and ask God for strength and courage.

Psalms 55:16 As for me, I shall call upon God, And the Lord will save me.

Psalms 55:22 Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

I can honestly and sincerely say that I am feeling zero fear over this whole Coronavirus thing. I am not naturally brave or courageous, but I do pray a lot and I ask God to help me, to give me peace, joy, and strength in spite of circumstances, and He answers that prayer.

Jesus said to take the log out of my own eye before I attempt to take a splinter out of someone else’s eye. If I am going to try and get something out of my own eye I will use a mirror, otherwise it will be very difficult. We understand that Jesus is talking about our faults, character flaws, weaknesses, and sin habits. Self examination and reflecting on who we are and how we can grow and improve is important. The main area of my life that I think about in trying to discern my weaknesses is in my relationships. How am I doing with others in treating them well, loving them, encouraging them, appreciating them, forgiving them quickly of anything, speaking grace into their life, holding them accountable in a way that is accepted and motivates, and being a friend. Most followers of Jesus spend very little time thinking and reflecting on their life, and how they can grow and improve. Many avoid the discipline because they tend to condemn themselves and feel badly about who they are. Many others have justified, and excused their flaws, and blamed them on others to the point that they have become blinded to their own weaknesses. If I hunger and thirst after maturity and growth, regularly examine my own life, make commitments and goals to improve and grow in the things I see that need fixing, constantly ask the Lord to show me the things in me that need work, and then call on Him for the grace to grow, the entire experience is one that gives me hope and confidence that I indeed can change and that I can be used by God to help others change. One of the best results of this process of taking logs out of my own eye is that my relationship with other people grows. But it all begins with the daily discipline of examining my own life, knowing that I have faults, blind spots, and character flaws, and wanting to grow past them in order to be pleasing to the Lord and useful to Him to help others.

I believe that God created everything in the universe, He thought up the design, the shape, and how everything fits and works together. Even a cursory study of science, astronomy, and geography will reveal incredible complexity and creativity in all that we see and often take for granted. The conclusion is that God is amazingly intelligent, in fact we use the term omniscient in describing Him, meaning that His intelligence is infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible. I can’t imagine what it is going to be like to actually communicate with Him when I get to heaven and get my new body and my new mind.

I am created by God in His image and likeness, meaning that in a greatly reduced way I am like God and function best when I function the way He does. I have creativity, I dream about the future, I work at thinking up new ways to do things, new things to do, and different ways to do them. Certain experiences and circumstances sort of push the creativity button in my mind. Monday through Thursday this week I am at the annual meetings for the Conservative Baptist Association of the North West and one of the things that happens at the meetings is preaching and teaching the Bible. The speakers speak specifically to pastors, and the speaker tonight was the new general directory for the Association, and for whatever reason he pushed my button and my mind started going a thousand miles an hour, creating all kinds of new sermon topics, new ways of doing everything in the church, and new adventures. I wrote as fast as I could because when the button is pushed the creative juices only flow for a little bit. But I wrote way more than I have years left to do. I always let new and creative ideas age for awhile and they either get better or die. It is my way of deciding what is God’s will or not. It is fun to be creative, even just on paper, but it is super exciting to put together a new plan or ministry, or sermon series. I look forward to the days ahead to see what will happen.

Ephesians 4:29 Was one of the main verses we used as a goal in our parenting of our kids, “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” The goal was simply, “Talk nice”. We dealt with even minor violations of this family standard, and we used a variety of methods and strategies to reinforce this expected discipline in talking to each other. Though it took time the kids all grew steadily more gracious in their speech to each other. This evening 4 of the 8 of our kids and their spouses and kids came over for dinner at our house. It was so enjoyable listening to the conversation between them all. As I sat listening to the flow of conversation between them all, including the normal banter and kidding, I thought nothing is more necessary for a good positive relationship than the discipline of talking nice. I thought to myself, how sad it is that there are so many grown adults who have not learned this most basic of relational skills.

Ephesians 4:29 is so simple and complete. It ought to be a verse that everyone who wants to improve their relationship with others memorizes and meditates on constantly. “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.”

In my morning prayer of commitment one of the commitments that I make is, “today I will love any person You, Lord sovereignly bring into my life, no matter how difficult they might be to love”. In order to keep that commitment I had to define what that meant to love them, it needed to be more than a nice fuzzy feeling toward them. So I came up with 5 expressions of my love towards them. First my declaration to love the hard to love was that I would not avoid them because they were unpleasant, boring, or irritating, I would give them some time. Second, I would listen attentively as they talked and I would respond and enter into conversation with them. Third, I would honor them as a child of God and I would be nice, gracious, and kind to them. Fourth, I would not gossip or talk unkindly about them to others. And fifth, I will pray for them that God will bless them and use them for His glory. Loving people is such a key part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, but it is easy to love the nice, personable, lovable, and pleasant people, but the real test of my faith and my obedience to Jesus as my Lord is loving the hard to love. I am a long ways from perfect, but I make a daily concerted effort to love everybody that God brings into my life, especially the unlovable. But I see others who are normally good Christians, but with certain people they are rude, grouchy, impatient, and gossip about them. Granted they bring a lot of that onto themselves because of their behavior but those who love the unlovable are special favorites with God.

I wrote this blog 3 years ago, and I thought I would republish it to go along with the blog 2 days ago on deference.

I taught on the character trait of deference in my last leadership class lesson. Deference is putting others ahead of myself. Pretend there was a parking lot with 1,000 cars in it, and the people who drove there and parked them were all going to the same event. The event goes very late and when it is finally over everyone heads for their cars, and the parking lot has just one single lane exit. If Patty and I were there and she was driving we would be the last ones out of the parking lot, because Patty has mastered the character trait of deference. If we weren’t the last ones to leave there would be someone with more deference than Patty, and I doubt that person exists . Deference is also defined as limiting my freedoms, my rights, and my opinions so that I don’t offend another person, who may have different beliefs and opinions. This doesn’t mean that we are weak, in fact those who consistently practice deference are some of the strongest and most confident people there are, because they don’t have to be right to feel good about themselves. Our goal isn’t to be right but to influence people toward faith in Christ. God greatly blesses the person with deference with great authority and many opportunities to make a difference in the lives of people.

One of the 26 character traits that I think I have grown the most in is patience. That is not to say that Patience is a strength, just that I have grown a lot in that area, but I recognize that I still have lots of growing to do. It used to be that when there were relational conflicts around me, either that I was part of or between family, friends, or church people I would come to a conclusion about what the problem was quickly, who was the problem and fix it now or attempt to fix it. I would either apologize, or confront, or teach, or scold, but I would do something in an attempt to create peace and unity. Now I wait longer, pray more, relax and don’t get as uptight in the midst of relational tensions as I used to. It isn’t that I don’t care about unity and peace between myself and others, or in the lives of those around me, it is just that I give things more time for God to work, people to grow, and for me to have more wisdom and insight into the solution. It wasn’t uncommon for me in the past to create more relational problems than I fixed because my initial conclusions were inaccurate and my solutions were impulsive and reactionary. Some of the little “sayings” that I use in my self-talk in this area are, “don’t give God a deadline to change people”, “wisdom is as much about when to do something as it is about what to do”, “if I can wait without things getting to much worse, I will because I will probably gain a whole lot more information, insight, and wisdom if I do”, “If I wait and think about a situation, my part in the conflict will probably accurately grow in my own mind from 5% to 90%, and that will certainly change what I do to fix it, I don’t want to be guilty of attempting to pick a splinter out of someone else’s eye, with a log in my own eye”, “almost everybody is growing, and often conflict will promote growth in those involved, so don’t be to quick to try and take it away”, and one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Proverbs 16:7 “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

So many people have conflicts with others. Husbands and wives have conflicts, kids and parents hurt and offend each other, and people in the work place are often bickering. Jesus prayed that we would be as unified as He and God the Father were. The Bible is full of guidelines on how to be at peace with everyone in your life. The most important principle is work very hard at it, do the hard things that need to be done to be at peace with those in your life.

Romans 14:19 So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

A second principle is to continually practice deference. Deference is a very important character trait that most people don’t have, at least not much. Deference is putting other people and their needs ahead of our own needs. Deference is guarding our mouth so as not to say things that offend other people. Deference is limiting our freedom so as not to be a reason that those around us are hurt. There are certain character traits that especially please God, and deference is right at the top of the list. It takes a lot of work to successfully practice deference, it takes a lot of self sacrifice, a lot of giving, a lot of self-control and a lot of humility to be the one who initiates reconciliation.